REGARDING THE LEGAL CLAIMS OF AYAHUASCA HEALINGS AND THE ONAC

There are a lot of details involved with this issue that would take even more time and space then I am already allowing here. I will try to be brief and concise. An even more nuanced and precise account can be given as we go on

The fundamental legal issue here is the assertion by Ayahuasca Healings that:

“We have 100% legal rights to use the sacred sacraments of Ayahuasca, Peyote, San Pedro – any plant that grows from the earth – inside of America, according to the laws of the land.”

“Anybody who is a member of our church, and our mother church, the Oklevueha Native American Church, has complete, 100% unquestionable legality to sit with this plant medicine and great teacher spirit of Mother Ayahuasca, and any other plant sacraments that grow from the earth.”

This is categorically untrue. It is based on a lack of understanding and misreading of legislation and case law. This lack of understanding seem to be based on Ayahuasca Healing listening to James Mooney and the ONAC and not to actual lawyers who have expertise in these matters.

James Mooney/ONAC won a case in the Utah Supreme Court that clarified that non tribal members in Utah can use peyote as part of a Native American Church. This case only applied to Utah and only to Peyote. It did not extend to any other plant medicines.

The court ruled based on the plain language of the religious peyote exemption. They ruled that because the text of the exemption is devoid of any reference to tribal status, they could find no support for an interpretation limiting the exemption to tribal members.

This language is what allows peyote use in any NAC church in Utah regardless of whether the participants are Native Americans. Again only Peyote. No other plant medicine. And only in Utah.

Mooney/ONAC and Ayahuasca Healings try to maintain that the US Supreme Court decision in the UDV Ayahuasca case makes them legal. It does not. It only allowed the UDV to legally use Ayahuasca and not any other plant medicine.

It created a precedent that other groups can use in asking for an exemption from the DEA or going to court to force the exemption. Yet, it does not in and of itself make Ayahuasca legal for the ONAC or any other religious group.

A branch of the Santo Daime also won the right to use Ayahuasca in a federal court case. They used the UDV case as a precedent. They were not automatically legal after the Supreme Court’s UDV ruling. They had to go to court to fight for their right. This Santo Daime ruling only applied to the Santo Daime and only to the use of Ayahuasca not to any other plant medicine.

It also was only was effective within the jurisdiction of the 9th district . Though the DEA has now stopped fighting them and is giving them exemptions to open branches in other states without going to court.

The UDV and Santo Daime also have to follow strict protocols on the tracking, storage and distribution of their Ayahuasca to prove that none of it is being diverted outside of the specific religious context.

Nothing in these cases or in the wording of RFRA, AIFRA or the First Amendment allows Ayahuasca Healings or the ONAC to legally use or conduct ceremonies with Ayahuasca or any other plant medicine (with the exception of Peyote in the context previously mentioned.)

Again these court cases and these laws create precedents and contexts for becoming legal. Yet, each church has to go through the process. It is not automatic. Not a given.

And if a church wants to claim a right to use multiple controlled substances they will have a much harder case than the UDV or the Santo Daime. Both because it may be very difficult to impossible to show why each sacrament/controlled substance is essential to the practice of the religion as well as being able to prove you have strict controls that will guard against diversion.

People can try to spin this to to suit their perceived needs but it is not a matter of my opinion or their opinion. It is a matter of the courts opinions and the letter of the law which is quite unambiguous in this matter:

Neither Ayahuasca Healings or any branch of the ONAC can legally conduct Ayahuasca ceremonies unless they ask for and get an exemption to do so from the DEA or a specific court ruling that forces the DEA to give them the exemption. Just as the UDV and Santo Daime did. That's just how it is at the present time.

Just so it's clear I think these medicines should be legally available to us without going through all these hoops. And many of us choose to partake of sacred medicine regardless of the letter of the law.

Yet to publicize Ayahuasca retreats and assert that you are legal when you are not brings unwelcome attention to the medicine community as well as calling into question the good judgment of those who are leading these retreats and churches. I hope their discernment will soon match their enthusiasm.

Thank you for sharing - good for people to know about these guys before they get in trouble like that poor chap facing 20 years prison who thought his ONAC membership would let him grow weed legally just because ONAC told him it would....

Hey Mods!
This has become a pretty big current issue in the community.

Should all threads on the subject (3, I rhink) be merged?

Perhaps information about this "church " should be centralized and easy to find?

I see similar stuff going on in the 5-MeO-DMT world as of late.

Organizations like this make me very angry.

Not only are they attempting to capitalize on the legal rights indigenous groups have fought hard to earn, but they are also attempting to trick people into believing they actually have these legal rights in the first place.

IMO if you want to use ayahuasca, marijuana, peyote, mushrooms, or any other plant based entheogens for medicinal or spiritual properties do so as you see fit regardless of the law.
Plenty of us are using these plants without attempting to gain access to legal protections we obviously are not entitled to.
Yes, we should all have the rights to use plant based medicines legally but we are NOT all part of a culture that has won the rights to legally do so & it is not only disrespectful but immoral as well to suddenly decide you want to claim the freedoms of a particular religious group you have zero ties to.

Welcome dharmahuasca - sweet name and good on you for actually paying attention to what's up. I am really surprised these kids have not seen more resistance from "the community." I guess they have their social networking chops or whatever locked down.

concombres - YES.

Greetings Slewb, they actually are getting a fair amount of pushback on Ayahuasca.com, on Facebook. Later I will include links of some of these conversations.

I think they are sincere yet misguided and misinformed. The medicine can spark energy and exuberance that can tip into grandiosity. I think some of that is happening here.

They are not grounded in their legal understanding and they creating a lot of unwarranted publicity that IMO will not serve anyone well at the moment. Plus there are numerous issues with referring to themselves as a "Native American Church". Peyote is the protected sacrament of the NAC. There is not tradition of using Ayahuasca in it. This configuration of people and circumstance doesn't seem like good ground for Ayahuasca to be transplanted into the Tipi.

On forums like this with folks who put in the effort to inform themselves, yeah there are plenty of doubters. But on mainstream style internets like facebook and youtube people seem to be latching on in a potentially dangerous way.

I think what null said and what Praxis suggested in the other thread is a good idea - legal issues come up often enough in here that it might not be a bad idea to consolidate topics to a thread or subforum for easy access.

These groups are dangerous, as they are using intentionally misinformed people as pawns to fight government repression. Eventually, legalization will win, but these guys who are told they are in the clear are like the first row of soldiers on D-Day who were shredded by the machine gun encampments. It was the same with marijuana... Remember that guy who grew medical cannabis for a state government, and then was jailed by the feds for years?

Everything is legal until the FBI arrives.


On this I markedly disagree. All human beings are entitled to such legal protection. We just don't have it.

We are outlaws, cowboys, smugglers, rebels... Not all people are comfortable with breaking a law that carries such heavy penalties, even if that law is clearly unjust.


You make it out as it would be normal for people to be jailed for spiritual healing... These are not special privileges these groups have "won" for themselves, it's a clear injustice and an atrocity on all humankind that they have somehow managed to receive an exemption from.

It's not like "all Piresians are entitled to a share of the ancient tribal land to tend to, three sperm whales to hunt each year, and a hundred oxen, so I decided my grandpa kindof looked Piresian", it's like "using antibiotics carries a penalty of 20 years in prison, unless you are Piresian - I'm dying of TBC, so I'm looking into how I might become Piresian".

concombres wrote "Yes, we should all have the rights to use plant based medicines legally but we are NOT all part of a culture that has won the rights to legally do so & it is not only disrespectful but immoral as well to suddenly decide you want to claim the freedoms of a particular religious group you have zero ties to."

Well, one of the points in my original post is how confused Ayahuasca Healings and ONAC are about the legal sphere. Native Americans with tribal affiliations can only legally use Peyote and that came about through an amendment to the American Indian Religious Freedom Act. Native Americans have no more rights or exemption to use Ayahuasca, cannabis, psilocybin etc. then anyone else though this is what Ayahuasca Healings and ONAC claim.

They also conflate and confuse the case law around the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and how the act functions. They seem to believe that the UDV case allows them to be legal without applying for or going to court for an exemption.

What rights anyone should or shouldn't have is of course a different question. Ayahuasca Healings and ONAC by claiming they already can legally use Ayahuasca call into question their discernment and good judgment.

And as you say it is disrespectful to claim the freedom of a religious/cultural group you have no real ties too (even if they don't actually have that freedom!).

(BTW I am still a recent member so I can't post in any of the other topics that have been referenced.)

In my opinion, we are all part of a "religious" (or spiritual) group who use plant healers to improve our lives and our understanding of our place within it. We're not "junkies" or "abusers" as they make us out to be.

Who is to say "your spirituality is less real than that of this other person, because you found this path for yourself and didn't inherit it from your grandfather"?! (Yes I know, the federal government. But I'm talking about principles, not legal realities.) And besides, the fathers of some of us were hippies who did LSD, so those of us kinda did.

Let's not make this out to be some kind of "evil white people want to steal natives' right to use plant teachers", this is more like "oppressed people who use plant healers want to stop being oppressed". There is nothing ethically wrong with claiming a religious defense.

It is technically wrong, as such defense doesn't really exist in the current legal climate, but it's not ethically wrong.

I don't disagree with you. However, I started this thread to discuss the "legal realities" of Ayahuasca Healings and ONAC. Their specious legal claims (even though they seem to believe them) and publicity create confusion and a lack of clarity about the medicine and the law. It appears their lack of discernment carries over into the social cultural sphere as well..

Co-Sign!

I would like to still have a thread that is focused on the legal aspects of Ayahuasca Healings/ONAC since the legal claim is what has gotten them all the attention. Though perhaps it should be in the Open Discussion now? (Done) I started it in the Welcome area because until today that was the only place I could post.

welcome dharmahuasca

i agree that this thread focuses on the purely legal issues of their claim, whereas the other main one looks at corruption in the ONAC, and more generally https://www.dmt-nexus.me...aspx?g=posts&t=68453
it would be interesting to read some of these links you mentioned earlier,
work towards ayahuascan knowledge is always appreciated here, thank you.

Hi Nen, Here are some links I mentioned

There is a Facebook group with a broad focus on ayahuasca that has a fair amount of pages and comments about Ayahuasca Healings. Three in particular are:

https://www.facebook.com...alink/10153287326269013/

https://www.facebook.com...alink/10153286630714013/

https://www.facebook.com...alink/10153288766014013/

Ayahuasca.com has two threads (that I started as Ayalight.) There is a lot of info in them.
Sachamambi, the boards admin, has posted a lot of good info in them too.

http://forums.ayahuasca....pic.php?f=15&t=41257

http://forums.ayahuasca....pic.php?f=15&t=41228

BTW I have just begun some private discussions with a number of people involved in Ayahuasca Healings.
My impression is they are sincere in wanting to understand the legal facts and the other concerns the community has about their retreat. Time will tell of course. If we see the legal claims change and the website change then it will be real.

Ye I do think they are sincere beyond whatever ways we may think they are misinformed or misguided. They may want to navigate out of the difficult waters they have sailed into. Perhaps something good will come out of this controversy.

For me, this goes far beyond the legal question. I have not spoken with them at all, yet I would also believe they want to get the legal facts correct. After all, it's hard to make beaucoup bucks if you're fighting a legal battle with the Feds and not administering drugs to starry-eyed wanderers.


What will be real? Their retreat center? Their desire to rake in the $$$? Their attempt to transliterate a hodgepodge of "traditional" entheogenic practices into an "authentic" presentation for mass consumption? Sorry, I know I sound snarky...I'm not attacking you, but I am curious as to what will be "real" here.


I don't think that sincerity is the best metric to apply. The conquistadors were sincere and look how that turned out. The simple fact of the matter, for me, is that they are engaged in the commodification of entheogenic/psychedelic practices while pretending that they are not. I mean, their website literally says:




So it's not an exchange of money for goods/services...it's just a coincidence that your "donation" covers goods and services. Get outta here.

Additionally, they provide evidence that they already have unique familiarity with spiritual pyramid schemes...look at this logic:



This isn't just problematic because they are making false claims about legality.

Imo, this is problematic because it presents a microcosm of the major themes of the popularization of psychedelics and shamanic tourism, with all of the chic scenesters, predatory practitioners, and ritual fetishization.

I don't think there's anything to reform here any more than Talat's shamonautic sessions. Some structures/institutions are antithetical to the world that I would like to see (psychedelic or otherwise) and I think it's important to recognize those structures/institutions for what they are. For me, this project represents a detrimental approach to these substances and experiences.

To quote the meme...

Kill it with fire

SnozzleBerry,

I agree there are a whole plethora of issues here beginning with the grandiose tone of the offering and the cost which raises many questions. I have opinions about these things yet I am focusing on the legal aspect and their public pronouncements about it because it is what has drawn attention to them and could draw unwelcome attention to others.

It also underscores how little due diligence they have done about a core claim they are making. If they have gotten their legal standing so wrong what else have they misconstrued or not appropriately addressed?

I’m discouraged today about my sense of how open they may be to truly coming to terms with the dysfunctional dimensions of their endeavor. What is obvious to many of us seems veiled to them by the fog of their self aggrandizement.

Nothing like the great American tradition of stealing something that has been sacred, for thousands of years, to a colonized culture and selling it to wealthy white people at costs that prohibit many of the natives from whom it was stolen from taking part in their own practice.

God bless America

Blessings
~ND